Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Early on, Senator Arlen Specter’s supporters knew that the 80-year-old Republican-turned-Democrat was in trouble.

“Turnout was terrible,” Gov. Edward G. Rendell said less than two hours before the polls closed here.

And just about two hours after they had closed, he blamed the rain and the low turnout in Philadelphia for ending Mr. Specter’s 30 years in the Senate.

“The rain killed Arlen,” Mr. Rendell said dejectedly. “Whatever chance he had went down with the rain.”

Mr. Specter, a survivor of cancer and a brain tumor, was a master of political survival, too, largely by nimbly balancing the interests of both parties. But last year, when he saw that he could not win re-election this year as a Republican, he switched sides, a move that was not enough to save him from defeat in the Democratic primary on Tuesday.

Mr. Specter won just three counties, including Philadelphia, but not by the huge amounts needed to offset the wins by Representative Joe Sestak everywhere else in the state.

Mr. Sestak’s campaign focused relentlessly on Mr. Specter’s party switch, saying that it symbolized his opportunism and that he was out for himself. Mr. Specter may have sown the seeds of his own destruction when he readily admitted that he changed sides to keep his seat.

He was encouraged by President Obama, who was looking for a 60th vote in the Senate and promised Mr. Specter all the support a sitting president could muster. In the end, Mr. Obama held a fund-raising event for him, which provided vivid footage in a television commercial. But as an anti-incumbency wave seemed to sweep the country, the president studiously avoided campaigning here.

After the dust settled, some analysts said that an Obama rally in Philadelphia, where the president remains popular, might have excited the electorate more and increased the turnout enough to save Mr. Specter.

Still, Mr. Specter had to contend with the fallout from his years as a Republican, including devastating footage of his endorsement in 2004 by President George W. Bush.

Mr. Specter looked shaken and emotional in a brief concession speech at a hotel here. He perfunctorily thanked Mr. Obama and Mr. Rendell and pledged his support to Mr. Sestak.

In sharp contrast, Mr. Sestak, 58, delivered an exuberant victory speech in which declared: “This is what democracy looks like!”

Although he himself has served in Washington, Mr. Sestak cast Mr. Specter as the candidate of Washington and did his best to distance himself from the wave of anti-incumbency sweeping the country.

Mr. Rendell, in an interview in his office here, said Mr. Specter’s loss should not be interpreted as part of a national trend.

Rather, he said, the race was a referendum on Mr. Specter.

“None of these results should be taken as meaning anything,” the governor said as he mulled the ins and outs of the nail-biting race. “If it’s about anything, it’s about the difficulties of party-switching.”

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